On 23rd June, Microsoft unveiled their new free security tool, Microsoft Security Essential (codenamed: Morro). The beta download was capped to 75000 and was restricted to USA and China, however, the beta is already available through file sharing networks, which means you don’t have to sit there and wait for it to be available in your country. [Link: Softpedia]
Microsoft Security Essential will replace Windows Live OneCare and is designed to fight viruses, rootkits and other malware. Firewall and anti-spam protection is not covered in the package, but that can be justified since Windows Firewall and Windows Defender are now shipped with Windows.
Independent testing done by AV-Test.org has proved Microsoft Security Essential to be very accurate. Here’s an excerpt of what they had to say:
"We scanned a set of WildList malware (on-demand test) and we also tested the on-access guard with the same set of samples. Our set included 3,194 common virus, bot and worm samples from the most recent WildList 05/2009, released about one week ago.
All files were properly detected and treated by the product. That’s good, as several other AV scanners are still not able to detect and kill all of these critters yet. (Extensive testing of the entire collection of malware files we have will take a lot more time, but we will do this in the coming days.)
We’ve also tested the product against a large set of false positives, but none of the clean files were flagged as being malicious – very good."
Microsoft Security Essential lacks behavior based virus detection, which means the security software relies on definition updates and can’t detect new worms and Trojans based on their generic behavior.
How to install:
You can download Microsoft Security Essential from Softpedia (Size: 4.7 MB). The installation will ask you to validate your copy of Windows before installing. It will automatically update virus and spyware definition and real time protection is enabled by default. You can choose between Quick, Fill and Custom scans.
Screenshots:
The user interface is crispy and clean, and it resembles a lot with the UI of Windows Defender.
Microsoft Security Essential is due for public release in September 09. When I pick any antivirus, I want it to be reliable, quick and consume fewer resources on my computer. I can undoubtedly say MSE passes all these criteria.
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